Metal means... (Pt3)

Putting your money where you mouth is, is quite something… probably the most overwhelming revelation of my past two weeks has been how incredibly mundane being serious about revolutionary social change actually is - needs to be…

…the biggest struggle, the most challenging part of actually trying to ‘lead a complete, a noble, a rational existence’[1] - of trying to do something about the things I love moaning about - is the deconstruction of a whole lotta nonsense in the ol’ noggin… it’s a mess up there, turns out…

I’ve really had to sit myself down and give myself the ‘you will never be a Rock Star’ talk, which is heart-breaking… I’ve been able to console myself, slightly – being a generous and compassionate fellah – by pointing out that no matter how genius my Rock maybe, unless I am a business man ready to sacrifice and devote a large part of my personality to ‘working in the industry’ my art will never be known… yep… I gotta cast off all my dreams about appearing in really poorly directed Rock videos, adorned with Python, clad in vac-pressed leggings… Rotherham, or wherever you maybe, is not glamourous…

.deal.with.it.

I’ve noticed that I have to really believe those bits about equality, justice, peace, freedom, meaningful work, enduring community relationships, that I say I agree with… all that stuff and the rest… really necessary to actually believe that s**t and carry it all around with me, baring it in the forefront of my mind, letting it hang from the tip of my tongue like lung-butter ready to flobbed out into a doubter’s face – obviously in a compassionate way…

…the reason I, and anyone who is serious about social change, have to be thus is that there is so little in the way of support for these ideas… more accurately, you just don’t hear or encounter much evidence for these ideas in an average day… if you did, it wouldn’t take such a conscious effort to bare it all in mind…

…stood on the stall with my crane-driver mate, handing out leaflets and getting people to sign petitions against the privatization of the Post Offices I did notice that, other than the odd nutter (glad of a bit of human attention), older folk are much more ready to come up and take a leaflet or sign the petition or have a natter about the state of this or that… if I were being funny, I could make some joke about the old buggers having nothing better to do, but that would be in bad taste…

But you get no young f**kers coming up to you… the girls, especially, look like you just asked them if they would mind terribly being spaffed on… the lads just look sheepish and call you w**ker, not realizing the bone-shaving accurateness of their flippant remarks…

But my hilarious gags aside, I think I know why this is, why old folks are a bit more willing to engage…

…they remember Thatcher telling the world “T.I.N.A.” – there is no alternative and that there is no society… and they remember thinking that it was b****cks then; and it is still b****cks now… us young uns, well, we don’t know that Thatcher said these things; at least 30 years ago people knew that Trade Unions existed and were up to something…

…but we (and here I place myself in the ranks of the young) have been brought up in a societal environment that has gradually accepted these ideas and implied them into our consciousnesses, along with their associated values and presuppositions, so now they act as a kind of filter, only letting through concepts about the world that resemble the way it already looks… more, these filters allow us to structure our attitudes to resemble the very narrow spectrum presented to us in education, media and art; which means the closer we are able to resemble these values, the more likely we will be selected from the pool of like minded non-thinkers for a well paid position as cheer-leader for the status quo…

…you end up wanting to be a rock star, in a spandex jump suite with sequins, standing in front of millions of people chanting your name because you ‘co-write’ songs that sound like cheap, toothless versions of songs by bands no-one listens to anymore but who everyone has a T-shirt of…

Peace,

Bing!x - http://www.bing-em-all.blogspot.com/

[1] http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/kropotkin/atty.html